Email is a great tool for communication, marketing, and sales. When used effectively, it can generate not only additional traffic to your site, but also more long-term customers who will refer your business.

Getting people to your site and subscribed is one thing. Knowing which traffic methods convert best is another.

Do you know which are working for you?

Here’s how to use a combination of Google Analytics and AWeber to track email marketing efforts, and find out exactly where your email subscribers come from.

A Tale Of A Form And Two Pages

In order to set this all up, you’ll need to create a web form in AWeber. You do this by:

1. Logging in to your account
2. Selecting the list you want to create a form for
3. Click on the Web Forms link in the main navigation
4. Click the Create Web Form button
5. The wizard will walk you through the steps of formatting the form

Here’s the very important part: in step 2, you want to use a custom page for the thank you page.

AWeber Custom Thank You Page

We’ll talk later about what specifically you want on that custom thank you page, but for now know that you should have one set up.

This is not our final landing page, but I want you to know what you need one of these if you’re serious about building your email lists.

So with the lecture out of the way, let’s look at the second page we need.

When you first set up your list, you have the option of creating a custom success page. If you don’t fill this out I think AWeber sends you to a thank you page that they created. Frankly I’m not sure as I’ve always had a success page, so don’t chance it.

This success page is the crucial page to have – it’s how we know if people are converting, and what we’ll use for our analytics.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Create a custom thank you page on your site and nicely thank the people for subscribing. Take note of the URL.
2. Log into AWeber and select your list.
3. In the main navigation, go to My Lists -> List Settings -> Confirmed Opt-In
4. At the bottom add the URL of the page you just created

You should have something like this:

AWeber Succcess Page

Now that we have that all in place, log in to your Google Analytics account and get ready to have a goal.

You Gots To Have Goals

AWeber does a great job of providing tons of metrics on our web forms – how many view it got, how many people subscribed to which one, split testing, and much more.

What it doesn’t tell us is specifically where those people come from. For that we turn to the omnipotent Google Analytics (GA).

After you log in to GA and select the site, click on Goals over there on the left.

Google Analytics Goals

Click on that link and once on the Goals Overview page click the Set Up Goals And Funnels link at the bottom.

On your profile page the goals section is in the middle, so not to fret if you don’t immediately see it. I clicked on the page a few times before I noticed it there, and then I made another cup of coffee. Anyhow…

Set up your first goal by clicking on the first one on the list.

The Goal Link

I don’t get too fancy here when naming things so I’m just going to call name my goal newsletter signup. What a brainiac I am

Leave active goal and the goal position alone for now, and select “URL Destination” for the Goal Type.

Under Goal Details change the match type to be Exact Match, and enter in the URL of your thank you page, the same URL that you put as your success page in AWeber.

Leave Case Sensitive unchecked, and if this goal is worth money to you, enter in a dollar figure.

Here’s what the full form looks like for me:

Google Analytics Goal Form Filled

If you want to go ninja you can even create a goal funnel to see if people follow the exact path through your site to complete the signup. I typically leave this alone for most of my forms as I typically have my signup forms on the top right of every page.

No funnel fits that.

Once you have the form filled out click the save button and you’re good.

Recommendation: I highly recommend that you put the goals overview on your GA dashboard so it’s one of the first metrics you see whenever you log in.

It’s All About Conversions

I’m a big fan of metrics and I measure everything possible. With this set up not only do we see how our forms are converting, we can track back using Google Analytics to see which traffic sources generated more conversions.

And that’s what it’s all about – conversions of one form or another.

Once you start seeing conversions you’ll get a nice little chart like this one from one of my web apps:

Goals Overview

But Where Are Conversions Coming From?

That would be good to know wouldn’t it.

To see what traffic sources are converting at what percentages do this:

1. Click on the Traffic Sources link on the left inside GA
2. Select All Traffic Sources
3. Click on Goal Set 1 (or whatever goal you want)
4. Observe the metrics goodness

Here’s what it looks like:

Traffic Sources And Conversions

Sorry competitors I’m not going to tell you where my traffic comes from. NANA!!!!

Sorry…

So sort by Goal Conversion Rate to see which traffic sources convert the best.

Then you know what to do – more of what works.

AWeber + Google Analytics = Pure Awesome

I’m a fan of pure awesome, and this is it. Two very easy to use tools combine to help you truly see where your traffic is coming from, how well it’s converting, and what elements work best to make those conversions happen.

I highly suggest you start doing this if you aren’t already. It took a total of 15 minutes to set this all up, and look what you get from that short amount of time.

So a question for you:

Question: how are you tracking your email conversions?

Let’s discuss it in the comments.

About Robert Dempsey

CEO & Founder of Dempsey Marketing, web developer, avid reader, proud father and husband. I get a lot of stuff done.

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